As availability of media objects (e.g., movies, music, photographs, e-mail, video or sound cliplets, pictures, and/or messages) has increased, the task of effectively browsing, editing and retrieving media has become difficult and cumbersome. Conventional media systems for browsing, editing, viewing, modifying, sorting, and the like have provided limited ability for a user to access the media in a meaningful manner.
For example, photographs digitally scanned onto a computer processor typically have nonsensical filenames associated therewith, making it difficult to manipulate and organize them. Providing more meaningful information to each file or media object must be done individually and separately which is time-consuming and tedious for regular or frequent use involving editing, sampling, and viewing, for example. Further, conventional media systems are typically rigid and thus limit a user's ability to personalize such systems. Moreover, conventional media systems remain complex and incomprehensible for quick retrieval, use, and viewing of the media objects.
In addition, conventional media systems have limited options for displaying the media for prolonged enjoyment. For example, most consumers load their digital photos on to their computers in such a way as to view and/or display them in a slide show mode. Most digital photos are not printed but instead are primarily only viewed by a user on the computer. Thus, the user must open the respective files to view and/or edit the particular photos which can be a rather tedious series of tasks. In the case of a screensaver slide show of the user's photos, the user has to stop use of the computer to allow for the screensaver slide show to be activated to view his/her photos. However, as soon as the user resumes use of the computer, the screen saver turns off and photo viewing again is terminated. Moreover, display of digital media is restrictive, inconvenient, and even cumbersome to consumers in general.